SNOW-CAD Working with Data Practice Question
A large enterprise runs ServiceNow on a single instance. They have a custom table 'u_project_task' that stores task details for projects. Each project task has a reference field to the 'u_project' table. The 'u_project' table has approximately 50,000 records, and the 'u_project_task' table has about 2 million records. Users report that opening a project record and viewing its related tasks takes over 30 seconds. The system uses an out-of-box related list to display tasks. The instance has standard hardware resources. The administrator has already confirmed that there are no performance issues with the database server or network. Which course of action should the administrator take to improve the performance of the related list?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse performance tuning with scaling infrastructure or extending timeouts, failing to recognize that the root cause is a missing database index on the foreign key column used in the JOIN.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Create a database index on the 'u_project' field in the 'u_project_task' table to speed up the join.
The performance bottleneck is the database query that joins the large 'u_project_task' table (2M records) with the 'u_project' table on the reference field. Without an index on the 'u_project' field in 'u_project_task', the database must perform a full table scan for each related list query. Creating a database index on that foreign key column allows the database to use an index seek, dramatically reducing query time.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Archive project tasks older than 1 year to a separate table to reduce the data volume.
Why it's wrong here
Archiving is a long-term solution and may not address the immediate performance issue.
- ✓
Create a database index on the 'u_project' field in the 'u_project_task' table to speed up the join.
Why this is correct
An index on the foreign key can significantly improve query performance for related lists.
- ✗
Increase the glide.ui.related_list.max_timeout property to allow the query more time.
Why it's wrong here
Timeout increase only masks slowness, does not improve query speed.
- ✗
Add additional application nodes to the instance to distribute the load.
Why it's wrong here
Horizontal scaling may not help if the bottleneck is database query performance.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SNOW-CAD practice question is part of Courseiva's free ServiceNow certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SNOW-CAD exam.